HISTORY

On the 8th June 1982, at the height of the Falklands War, 53 men lost their lives in the Argentine air attacks on the British ships, Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram. For the British military, this was the largest number of fatalities in a single incident since World War II.

30 years on, using never seen before archive, CGI and reconstruction, we tell the complete story of the events that led up to this attack. New testimony shows that this disaster was avoidable. It is a story of untold heroism and a catastrophic human waste.

Cyclone Tracy was one of the worst natural disasters in Australia’s history, virtually wiping the city of Darwin from the map. 40 years on, previously untold stories reveal compelling new perspectives on the devastating storm, the controversial mass evacuation and the troubled reconstruction, investigating the socio-political effects on Darwin and its residents.

Over the last 25 years more than 20,000 migrants have died in the Mediterranean in their attempt to reach Europe. Boats have gone adrift and sank under the eyes of coast guard ships, surveillance patrols and sometimes military buildings. In July 2012, a Euro-African activist coalition called “Boats 4 People” chartered a boat in order to monitor the border and denounce those responsible for this situation. Activists, lawyers and journalists were on board to sail the migration route the opposite way it is usually crossed by boat-people. This documentary shows the extraordinary action taken by activists from Africa and Europe – raising awareness, mobilizing public opinion and continuing the struggle for the rights of boat-people.

Beneath the surface of these cities, how do people live and work? What are the differences, what are the similarities, what are the stories? A worker at an iron-smelting factory in Beijing; a winemaker on the outskirts of Canberra; a Hansard reporter for Australia’s Parliament; weddings, farmers’ markets, and school playgrounds. Two photographers, changing places, viewing each other’s cities through the eyes of an artist — each seeing, beneath contrasting surfaces, the same inner hopes, fears and dreams. Citizens of sister cities, citizens of the world.

We become acquainted with the life and history of these two sister cities. One is ancient, with thousands of years of tradition, home to more than 20 million people; Beijing, Capital of the People’s Republic of China. One is barely one hundred years old, a planned city, home to less than half a million people, Canberra, the capital of Australia.

In this episode we visit national icons like Tiananmen Square, as well as national parkland on the outskirts of Canberra and the gardens and lakes of Beijing. We meet rural fire fighters and Chinese Opera performers, crosstalk artists and folk musicians—citizens of sister cities, citizens of the world.

As Australia commemorated the Bicentennial of the First Fleet on 26th January 1988, this historical event triggered the largest gathering of Indigenous people the country has ever seen. Aboriginal people travelled from all over Australia to take part in the March for Freedom, Hope and Justice. The protest instigated mass public debate about the concept of Australian history and the events of this day subsequently changed white and black Australia forever.

For centuries, Stonehenge has been a puzzle. There have been many disputed theories about this giant stone circle: the Romans imagined a temple to the sun god Apollo. Medieval legend said it was the work of the wizard Merlin. More recently, some have claimed it is a giant stone computer built to predict the movement of the stars.

But now, at last, we might be close to a real understanding of this iconic Stone Age monument. In a vast new archaeological investigation, Professor Mike Parker Pearson and his team are unearthing evidence that reveals Stonehenge may not have stood in isolation, but was part of one of the largest prehistoric religious complexes in the world. Within this complex they have discovered remains of the largest prehistoric settlement in northern Europe.

And at its centre stood an extraordinary near replica of Stonehenge itself, built not in stone but wood.

Exclusive archaeology takes us on a journey into the Egyptian underworld – opening a new window into the little known world of death in ancient Egypt. To the ancient Egyptians, life after death was a highstakes underworld journey fraught with terrifying obstacles: fiery lakes of death, battles with bona fide monsters and ultimately eternal death or resurrection with the sun. It’s a journey each Egyptian believed was real, and for the pharaoh the stakes were even higher – the entire cosmos depended on the king’s successful journey and resurrection.

Now, new excavations are revealing more than we’ve ever known about what the Egyptians knew they’d encounter on their afterlife journey. And we’re finding that the king’s tomb wasn’t just a place to keep his mummified corpse. The royal tomb was nothing less than a machine constructed to guarantee the king’s resurrection and eternal life. In Egypt Underworld, we follow one of ancient Egypt’s greatest pharaohs – Seti I – on his journey through the afterlife.

Over the centuries, scores of explorers attempted and failed to discover the lost civilisations that were rumoured to be hidden in the Amazon. Now, a new generation of scientific explorers is reviving the theories of ‘El Dorado’. What they’ve uncovered deep in the Amazon is evidence of massive, populated civilisations – radically challenging conventional notions of what the Western Hemisphere looked like before Columbus.

Who killed a ten-year-old child and hid the body beneath the floor of a Roman army barrack room nearly 1,800 years ago and why? Archaeologists, forensic scientists, historians and a homicide adviser pitch in to solve this fascinating mystery, deep into the life of a garrison on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. To bury someone within a fort was a strict taboo among the Romans so the murderer must have been desperate. Modern forensic science and plain old fashioned archaeology lead us to a series of possible scenarios that in the end bring a startling twist in a direction no one would have expected.